Hi Roger, yep, after a decade or so of WEA UK using their "K" numbering system, they adopted the numbering system shown here (which is essentially a slight variation to the US numbering) throughout Europe, and indeed many other countries in the world, including here in Australia - until about 1990 or so, all of WEA Australia's CD releases were German pressings, because there were no CD factories in this country then (the LPs were locally pressed by CBS). On the CD Albums part of the site, I usually comment that the German made CDs should be designated "International" if I know they were issued here.
An interesting theory PhilMH, but these releases do appear to follow the numbering system of other "German" Atlantic releases that are already entered here ... for example the Aretha Franklin "Best Of" catalogue number of 780 169-1 fits in neatly with this release by Laura Branigan (780 147-1), so perhaps other Atlantic/WEA releases from that period that have that numbering system (currently entered as "U.K." or "German"), should be regarded as "Europe" as well.
Anyway, best of luck with sorting it all out.
Hi Roger, by the 1980's WEA were manufacturing a lot of product in Germany for Europe-wide release (as were RCA), or maybe even specific countries other than Germany - that Aretha Franklin inner sleeve shows the UK company name, WEA Records Ltd, rather than the German company name WEA Musik GmbH, so it could probably be argued that it is a UK release. It is country of release that should be entered here, not country of manufacture, so I would enter these as Europe to be on the safe side.
Surely this is a German release. It has "Germany" on the top right of the back of the sleeve. It has "Manufactured In Germany" on the bottom of the back of the sleeve and the labels have the copyright disclaimer written in German (as well as in English).
I have the Aretha Franklin "Best Of" in this series which I recently entered as a German release, and posted images of the inner sleeve which can be seen here.